SLOWING DOWN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 September 1941, Page 6

SLOWING DOWN

OF GERMAN ONSLAUGHT IN UKRAINE GREAT FORCE ASSEMBLED AGAINST CRIMEA. BUT ALL ATTACKS SO FAR COSTLY FAILURES. (Received This Day, 1.30 p.m.) LONDON, September 29. , There is no further information supporting an earlier report that a German onslaught against Kharkov has already begun, but brisk engagements have occurred at various points in which the Russians have often been the attackers. The Berlin radio admitted that the Russians on the southern front had launched attacks, “with numerically greatly superior forces,” which were repulsed after fierce tank encounters. The sudden slowing down of the German advance in the Ukraine may merely mean that the most advanced troops have been checked and that the German High Command is making its customary preparations for a further, battering-ram push in great force. The “Daily Telegraph’s” Stockholm correspondent says the attack against the Crimea took on tremendous dimensions when, early today, panzer* brigades launched a new mass attackrfrom the village of Kalancnak against the defences of the Perekop Isthmus. Field-Marshal Rundstedt has concentrated twelve full divisions (nearly a quarter of a million men) on this front. Stukas and Heinkels are raiding the Russian positions and lines of ccmmunication without a stop, but the defenders’ organisation and morale are unshaken. The Germans’ frontal attacks in the past five days have ail been costly and spectacular failures.